Links to help from your application

Making the calls to your context-sensitive topics is basically a job for the programmer, not the help author (you may be both, of course). In the help itself there is no difference between context-sensitive topics and popups and normal topics and popups – the difference is how they are called from the application.

The HTML Help CHM files and Visual Studio Help files generated by Help+Manual are fully standard-compliant so you can use all the standard procedures for linking to and calling context-sensitive topics.

Context calls to WebHelp are made with regular URLs. For details see Application calls to WebHelp.

Internal structure of H+M CHM files

One important thing to know about the CHM files generated by Help+Manual when making calls to them from your applications is that there are no internal folders.

We use a "flat file" directory model inside the CHM, with everything on the root level. This means that all topics and other files inside the CHM can be accessed directly, without any path information. Some programming tips assume the use of folders -- for example a folder called "html" for the HTML topic files, and if they also include this path without alternatives in their call examples this will lead to failures. But that is really the only element of H+M CHM files that you need to be aware of.

Calls to normal topics in the TOC

These are normal topic calls that open the main help viewer at the topic you are making the call to. See your programming language's documentation for making calls to the help format you are using.

See Application calls to WebHelp for details of the URL syntax for making calls to WebHelp topics.

Calls to HTML Help popups

Application calls to HTML Help field-level popups are made using the popup interface of the Microsoft HTML Help API. The syntax for these calls depends on the programming language you are using. See the section on tutorials and resources for programmers below.

Application calls to HTML Help popups can only be made if you use HTML Help's own plain-text popup format, in which the popup texts are stored in a special plain-text file inside the CHM file.This option is activated in Configuration > Publishing Options > HTML Help > Popup Topics in the Project Explorer, where you can also specify the name of the text file to be generated.

Plain text popup topics used in HTML Help must have context numbers! This is required by the Microsoft HTML Help API for popups and if your popup topics do not have help context numbers they will not be exported to the internal popup text file in the CHM.

Tutorials and resources for programmers

•The HTML Help API is fully documented in the help of the free Microsoft HTML Help compiler (HTML Help Workshop).

•Tutorials for interfacing between your help and your application in the most major programming languages are available on the weblink tutorials page at the EC Software website.

•A free set of tools for interfacing to help and context-sensitive help in older versions of Borland Delphi and Borland C++ is also available at the website, on the weblink Delphi resources page. This is not needed in Delphi 2005 and later, which include integrated support for interfacing with HTML Help.

•The following websites are also highly recommended as good sources of up-to-date information on interfacing with help files from your application:

weblink The MS Help Wiki

weblink Helpware Group Help Knowledge Base

weblink MSDN HTML Help Reference

weblink The HTML Help Center

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